Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Baltimore is breaking records. In particular, it is breaking
records for homicides. It is leading the nation in per capita homicides.
Congratulations to the political leaders of the city for having earned this
distinction.

Everyone knows why this is happening. The city followed
Obama administration guidelines and blamed white police officers—in truth, not
just white officers—for black on black crime. In the past the police were
blamed for being too tough. So the police laid back. The result: more homicides. Now the police are being blamed for being too lenient,
too hands-off.

Others
blame police, accusing them of taking a hands-off approach to fighting crime
since six officers were charged in connection with the 2015 death of Freddie
Gray, a black man whose fatal spinal cord injury in police custody triggered
massive protests that year and the city’s worst riots in decades.

“The
conventional wisdom, or widely agreed upon speculation, suggests that the great
increase in murders is happening partly because the police have withdrawn from
aggressively addressing crime in the city’s many poor, crime-ridden
neighborhoods,” said Donald Norris, professor emeritus of public policy at the
University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Of course, there are more homicides in Rahm Emanuel’s
Chicago… but, on a per capita basis, Baltimore rules.